


Steps From Me to You

by fbismoak (midwestwind)



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Drama & Romance, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Long-Distance Relationship, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 01:44:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13284297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midwestwind/pseuds/fbismoak
Summary: “I don’t want you to go,” he admits quietly and Felicity can sense the ‘but’ coming before it ever falls from his lips. “But if you don’t take this job, you’ll kick yourself for it later.”“But what about-,” she starts, cut off by the soft look he gives her.“It’s you and me,” he says with an ease she knows is forced. It oddly makes her feel better. “What’s a few thousand miles?”(felicity takes the job of a lifetime - it just happens to be five thousand miles away from oliver.)





	Steps From Me to You

**Author's Note:**

> I have started so many things since the new year and this is the first thing over 5k that I've actually finished wow. (If you're a Strangers in the Night reader, I swear I am working on it!) Long distance AUs are so fun, though, and I feel like I've seen a lot of interest in one from this fandom? So, here's hoping there isn't already one out there...
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

“You have to go. You know that, right?”

 

Felicity plays absentmindedly with the knot in his tie, straightening the ever-crooked loop at his collarbone. Oliver ducks his head, an attempt to get her to make eye contact with him.

 

“Do I?” She asks quietly, finally looking up at him. He’s right, she knows. The opportunity she’s being offered is unmissable, but she can’t stop that nagging voice in her mind that wants him to ask her to stay.

 

It would be unfair of him to ask and it’s unfair of her to want him to. Oliver sighs, recognizing the defense mechanism for what it is.

 

“I don’t want you to go,” he admits quietly and Felicity can sense the ‘but’ coming before it ever falls from his lips. “But if you don’t take this job, you’ll kick yourself for it later.”

 

“But what about-,” she starts, cut off by the soft look he gives her.

 

“It’s you and me,” he says with an ease she knows is forced. It oddly makes her feel better. “What’s a few thousand miles?”

 

\---

 

He’s right. Technically. It’s less that five thousand miles from Washington to Tokyo, but it’s still a seventeen hour time difference. So, when Felicity lands in Japan at 10 P.M., it’s only 5 A.M. in Starling. She has about eight hundred things to do now that she’s actually made it to the country, but all she really wants is to call Oliver and check in.

 

Instead, she sends him a text - thank god for international phone plans - and searches for a cab to take her to the hotel she’s being put up in until she signs the lease on her apartment.

 

**_Felicity: Just landed. Didn’t want to wake you. Call when you have time? xx_ **

 

It takes a shocking amount of time to find a taxi leaving the airport and she really wishes she’d asked the company that’s hosting her for an escort. Her Japanese is rustier than she’d expected, having not really been utilized for much since college, and the words come slow as her brain tries to translate everything she’s hearing and reading.

 

Getting to the hotel, where most of the staff seem to be used to foreigners and speak English, makes her feel a little less stressed out. She gets up to her room and plugs her phone charger into a converter before plugging it into the wall outlet. It pings with the charge and she leaves it on the bed while she digs through one of her suitcases, searching for the blouse and skirt she’d specifically packed as a first day outfit.

 

The polka dot blouse is too loose in material to have suffered wrinkles from the long flight, but the same can’t be said for the cotton-blend pencil skirt. Felicity sighs, shaking it out a few times before giving up and hanging it up in the en suite bathroom with the shower running. First purchase once she moves into her apartment might have to be a steamer.

 

After she turns the water off, pleased with the job the steamy shower has done, her phone chimes on the bed with an incoming text and she crosses towards it. The message from Oliver sends a comfortable warmth through her.

 

**_Oliver: You awake?_ **

 

Felicity doesn’t bother with a response, swiping on his contact and hitting the small phone icon underneath his name. It gets halfway through the first ring before he answers, voice heavy with sleep, and Felicity’s chest pangs with a sudden longing.

 

She’s only been gone for twelve hours, she really needs to get it together.

 

“Hey, good morning,” Oliver greets and Felicity settles back into the hotel bed, not bothering to unmake it as she snuggles into the unfamiliar pillows.

 

“Good evening, really,” she says with a smile, closing her eyes and trying to picture him in their bedroom, tangled in the white sheets that cover their bed.

 

“Right,” he says, the sound muffled like he’s scrubbing his hand over his face. “What’s the time difference again?”

 

“Just seventeen hours,” she says with a practiced ease, reciting it in the same nonchalant tone she does everytime Oliver forgets and asks her again. _No big deal_ , she thinks each time. _Time isn’t real, anyway._ She decides to move away from the distance between them. “Do you need to get ready for work?”

 

“I’ve got some time and this is more important. If I’m late, I’m late,” he assures her, his voice steadying out, becoming clearer as he pulls himself further from sleep. She knows that the people who voted him into office would probably disagree with him, but the words make her feel better all the same. “How was the flight? No peanut incidents this time?”

 

He’s teasing her and she glares absently at the wall across from her, pretending it’s him. Last time they’d taken a flight together, she’d had a mini-gargantuan freak out over the inflight peanut bags. Nothing had happened, and she’d come prepared with an epi pen, but the guy in the seat next to hers had been the messiest eater she’d ever seen. How someone could have that much splash back from pre-shelled peanuts, she will never understand.

 

“The flight was fine,” she says, ignoring the playful dig at her expense. “Long, but I mostly slept through it anyway. Definitely better than that airline we used when we went to Aruba.”

 

“Well, I like to think that what we did in Aruba more than made up for the less than ideal means of getting there,” he comments and Felicity feels a flush cover her cheeks at the reminder of their first night on the beach, in the hotel, in the jacuzzi. In their defense, they’d only been dating for a few months when they took the trip and, well, she has an extremely attractive boyfriend.

 

“Yeah, no doubt,” she says quietly, closing her eyes and remembering the late night swim they’d taken and how his arms wrapped around her as the seawater made his skin taste like salt mixed with the coconut of his sunscreen. He’d told her he loved her for the first time on that beach, whispered words almost lost to the rising tide as his fingers played with the strings of her bikini bottoms.

 

“You’ve been gone less than a day,” he says, a false lightness to his tone that pulls Felicity almost forcefully from the memory, “And I already miss you.”

 

Felicity goes quiet for a moment as a sad chuckle punctuates the statement. They knew this would be hard, but Oliver had been insistent that he wouldn’t ask her to give up something this important, that they would make things work between them from a distance. She just didn’t expect to feel so immediately lonely in this big, new country where she can barely speak the language.

 

“What are your plans for tomorrow?” He asks, sharply redirecting the conversation from where he’d inadvertently sent it. Felicity knows she doesn’t need to echo his sentiment for him to know she feels the same.

 

“Well, I have my first day at Helix,” she answers, taking the diversion and instead allowing herself to feel a cautious excitement about the software development team she’ll be heading up. “Mr. James - do you remember him? He’s the one who reached out to me about the job. Anyway, he’s going to introduce me to my team. Which, just by the way, is such a strange thing to say. _My team_. How cool is that? I feel like the leader of some super secret crime fighting unit.”

 

Oliver laughs at the comment and Felicity shifts, tugging at the puffy comforter until it comes untucked from beneath the pillows and gives her just enough room to slide underneath the bedding. She settles onto her side, her phone tucked between her ear and the pillow.

 

“I’m so proud of you,” he tells her, a warmth to his voice that makes her chest warm. He’d said it when she’d first told him about the job offer and when she’d officially sent the email saying she accepted. But, it’s still nice to hear every now and then.

 

“Thanks,” she says quietly, wrapping the blankets around herself. “After all of that, I’m gonna go meet with the leaser for that apartment I found and sign the contract and then…”

 

\---

 

She must drift off while they’re on the phone because she wakes up to her alarm going off right next to her head and nearly tosses her phone across the room. Groaning, she reaches out to Oliver’s side of the bed, blindly searching for his constant warmth, but finds nothing.

 

“Right,” she comments softly into the unfamiliar room. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have time to acclimate herself. The alarm is a reminder that she needs to make it to her new job by eight and her skirt is still hanging up in the bathroom. She pushes the covers off of herself and grabs her makeup bag and toiletries from the suitcase she’d stashed them in and gets ready for a quick shower.

 

In her haste to get dressed, she doesn’t see the texts from Oliver until she’s leaving the hotel room. There’s an email from Mr. James telling her a car will be by her hotel at seven-thirty to pick her up and beneath it two texts from Oliver timestamped at one in the morning.

 

**_Oliver: You fell asleep and I needed to leave. Good luck today, you’re gonna do great! Love you_ **

**_Oliver: Also, your snoring is still cute over the phone_ **

 

\---

 

The good thing about being cherry-picked for a job nearly on the other side of the world is that the people at Helix seem to already know her. The bad thing is that the people at Helix seem to already know her. It’s hard to temper people’s expectations of you when they’re all a bunch of tech geniuses who have already exhaustively researched your name.

 

Not that everyone she’s introduced to isn’t incredibly nice. Helix is an American software development company which recently expanded to open a branch right in the heart of Tokyo. There’s probably some sinister colonial connotations there, but the opportunity to work with some of the most incredible software techs on the planet was not to be passed up. It helped that Cayden James, the overseer of the expansion, had reached out to her with the promise of heading up her own team and approving, working on, and helping brainstorm projects.

 

Overwhelming is probably a good word for it. But also exciting. Felicity knows she should be much more nervous than she is walking into Helix for the first time, but mostly she’s just excited.

 

The first person she meets, after Mr. James, is another project coordinator who will be training her and working closely with her to make sure she isn’t overwhelmed during her first weeks with Helix. Alena had also been handpicked to run her own team, but had started earlier than Felicity had. So far, she seems super nice.

 

“Okay, so, what are you doing tonight?” Alena asks, cornering Felicity by the coffee machine she’s trying to get used to, knowing it’s going to be a lifeline over the next year. “I mean, I’m assuming you have no friends here- not because I think you aren’t friendly! Just because you just moved here and I figure you haven’t had time to make any friends. Unless, you already knew people in Japan before you moved here, which would be smart but kind of unlikely...”

 

Felicity turns, raising a surprised eyebrow at the woman. And Oliver thinks she talks too much sometimes. It’s nice to know she’s not the only one feeling a little nervous, though.

 

“Babbling is usually my thing,” she laughs, setting a mug branded with the company logo beneath the spout and running the coffeemaker. “I’m going to sign the lease for my apartment this afternoon and then I’ll just be getting stuff unpacked, I guess. You’re right, I don’t know anyone here.”

 

“That’s perfect!” Alena enthuses, throwing her hands up in excitement. Felicity frowns at her, but the bubbly personality and untethered excitement is charming. “You have to come out for drinks with us tonight, then. We’ll celebrate your first day and it’ll give you a chance to meet some of the other project leaders.”

 

Felicity pulls her mug from under the stream of coffee as it peters to a stop, the hot liquid sending steam up towards the ceiling, and contemplates the offer. It might be nice to just get a chance to move her things in and take inventory. She’s almost certain she’s going to realize she’d forgotten something she wanted to bring and will need Oliver to ship it to her. But on the other hand…

 

“Please,” Alena pleads, dragging the first E out and giving Felicity her best grin.

 

It might be nice to have some friends while she settles into her place at the company and in the city. When she’d first moved to Starling, she hadn’t known anyone and no one at her first company really made the effort. It might make this whole transition easier if she knows the people she’ll be spending most of her time with a little better.

 

“Sure,” she agrees finally, lifting the coffee towards her lips and blowing the steam away. “That sounds like fun.”

 

\---

 

The upside to being the last - or at least one of the last - of the new hires to arrive in the city is that most of the other people she’ll be going out with have done their own exploring. Unfortunately, it also means they know each other to an extent by now and Felicity can’t help but feel a little out of the loop as they order drinks and mock each other for their lack of adventurousness.

 

Felicity orders a whiskey on the rocks just because it seems like a safe option and the scent of it always reminds her of late nights in fancy bars as Oliver tried to win her over, not realizing that she’d been his since the first time he’d waltzed into her little office and said her name. One of the other team leaders, a woman from the science department with flaming red hair and sparkling green eyes, calls her on the safe choice which leads the rest of the group to insist on choosing her next few drinks for her.

 

They’ve bought her two brightly colored drinks on top of the whiskey when her phone rings in her purse, vibrating the circular booth they’ve all crowded into. Felicity fumbles to pull it from the small black clutch, unable to temper the smile that breaks out across her face at the contact photo lighting up the screen.

 

“I have to take this,” she announces over the loud music, attempting to urge the people at her side to let her slide from the booth. “It’s my boyfriend.”

 

The statement earns her a split of booing and awwing, but Alena finally forces them to allow her out of the table. Felicity teeters on her heels, trying to find her balance after her thighs had begun to stick to the vinyl booth, before heading for the door and out onto the busy street. She answers the call just before it goes to voicemail.

 

“Hi,” she says a little breathlessly. “You’re up early.”

 

“Well, I figured I could sacrifice a little sleep for you,” Oliver says, voice rough in that delightful way that lets her know he’d called her as soon as he’d woken up. It makes her feel warm inside, which is probably amplified by the alcohol, that he’s as eager to talk as she is.

 

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” she teases, earning a chuckle from him.

 

“I wanted to check in,” he continues. “See how your first day went.”

 

“Really good,” she enthuses, her excitement increasing with the alcohol running through her system and the sound of his voice in her ear. She’d be embarrassed by how excited she is to talk to him after only two days apart, but it’s weird to go from seeing someone so consistently to not being able to see them at all. She drops her voice to a whisper, like she’s confiding a secret, “I’m a little drunk right now.”

 

“Yeah, I can tell,” he laughs. “It sounds loud there. Are you busy?”

 

“No,” she insists, shaking her head to herself. “Some people from work just insisted on taking me out to celebrate my first day.”

 

“I don’t want to pull you away,” he says and she can hear the frown in his voice. She’d much rather be talking to him anyway. “I’m glad you’re making friends.”

 

“It’s fine, really,” she tries to assure him. “I want to tell you about work and the new apartment and everything.”

 

“And I want to hear about it,” he says and she groans before he can even continue because she can hear the ‘but’ in his voice, “but I want you to enjoy yourself without worrying about me. How about you call me tomorrow morning when you wake up?”

 

“Okay, but it’ll be like seven in the morning here so,” she pauses to do some quick mental math, “like two p.m. there. Are you gonna be able to talk at work?”

 

“I’ll make time,” he promises. “I love you.”

 

“Love you,” she sighs before he hangs up. She stays there for a minute, pressed against the outside of the bar and pouting down at her phone. Alena comes spilling out of the bar with the group following her, laughing and shouting with tipsy excitement.

 

“Hey,” she calls when she spots Felicity. “We’re gonna get some food. You coming?”

 

With one more glance at her darkened phone screen, Felicity slips it back into her clutch and nods at Alena. They hurry to catch up with the rest of the group which hadn’t stopped for Felicity as they head down the street.

 

“Everything okay with your boyfriend?” Alena asks, looping her arm through Felicity’s.

 

“Yeah,” she nods, adding maybe a bit too much inflection to her tone and earning a questioning look from Alena. “It just already sucks being so far away.”

 

“I get it,” she nods sagely, squeezing Felicity’s arm gently. “I ended things with the guy I was seeing once I took the job. I knew we weren’t gonna last with that much distance between us,” she halts, realizing what she’s said and shoots Felicity a reassuring look. “But I’m sure it’s different for you guys.”

 

“Yeah,” Felicity says again, a little quieter this time. “I mean, what’s a few thousand miles, right?”

 

“That’s the spirit,” Alena practically shouts, earning a whoop in response from someone at the front of the group. Felicity can’t help but laugh at the absolutely ridiculous picture they all must make.

 

\---

 

“Will you still love me if I come home fat from all this stress eating I’ve been doing?” She asks, running her hand through her hair as she props herself up on her elbow to see Oliver better. He laughs at her, the sound filling her mostly empty studio apartment. It’s so beautiful she can’t help but smile back at him in return.

 

“You could come back two inches tall and I would still love you,” he assures her and she shakes her head at him, loose curls flopping around her face.

 

It’s a little after ten in the morning and Oliver’s facetime call had woken her up. Her phone sits propped up on the stand next to her bed. He’d called her after leaving work for the day, reminding her that it’s still Friday in Starling. She’s been in Japan for a few weeks now and running the team of developers has been a lot of work. It’s more than she’s previously been in charge of, but the entire team is so brilliant and competent which makes it worth it.

 

“How are things going there?” She asks as Oliver shifts. He’s still wearing his suit from work, but has shirked his jacket and rolled the sleeves of his dress shirt up to his elbows. Somehow the sight of him, rumpled and standing in their kitchen and so, so far away, makes her miss him even more.

 

“Good,” he says as he settles down into the kitchen chair, his own phone propped up against something on the table. She imagines it’s the novelty napkin holder she’d bought from a flea market a few months back. “I’m working on revising that gun legislation. I might actually have the votes to get the version I prefer passed this time.”

 

“That’s awesome!” She enthuses, chest swelling with pride at how much he’s done in the time he’s been mayor. He’d been voted in on a platform of unity, but the city has still been pretty divided. Politics are hardly Felicity’s forte, but she really thinks Oliver has the best ideas in mind for changing the city for the better.

 

“Yeah, so, if things calm down here,” he starts leadingly, glancing down and away from the camera. The sudden turn towards shyness is adorable on him and Felicity tilts her head, waiting him out. “Maybe I’ll get time for a vacation soon.”

 

“Oh, yeah,” she smiles teasingly, adjusting her head on her hand. “And where do you think you’d want to go?”

 

“Maybe an island nation,” he offers contemplatively, looking upwards and pretending to really consider the question. “Somewhere west of the Pacific.”

 

“Hmm,” Felicity hums, closing her eyes for a moment. “Well, I’ll let you know if I think of anywhere that meets your criteria.”

 

Oliver chuckles, shaking his head at her. He ducks it suddenly and Felicity doesn’t need to be in the kitchen with him to feel how the conversation shifts. It sends a pang through her chest, the reminder that this is the best they can manage at the moment - video calls and text messages and doing time conversions before they can call each other.

 

“I miss you,” he admits quietly and Felicity squeezes her eyes shut. Oliver doesn’t say those words often, carefully skirting around them. Not because he doesn’t, she knows he does just from subtext, but she also knows he doesn’t want her to carry the burden of forcing them to be so far apart. Oliver had made it clear from the get-go that it was a choice they made together, that it was more important that Felicity take this opportunity and they would make it work from a distance.

 

“I miss you, too,” she sighs, bunching her comforter up in her fist and trying to memorize the sight of him on her tiny phone screen. She reaches forward suddenly, as Oliver looks back up at her with a sad smile pulling at his lips, and presses the buttons on her phone to take a screenshot.

 

“You’ll have to teach me some Japanese if I’m gonna visit,” he says, pulling the subject away from the sad, longing place it had gone as Felicity pulls her hands back. She settles back onto her side, resting her head on her open palm.

 

“Oh, yeah?” She asks, smirking at him and shimmying her shoulders as best she can with them pressed into the mattress. “Are you asking me to be your teacher?”

 

Oliver groans, his eyes drifting shut as he tilts his head, hissing the words through his teeth, “Jesus, don’t put that image in my head right now.”

 

\---

 

A few months after she arrives, Felicity finds herself spending most of her free time with Alena and a few of the other workers. She thinks she’s made herself the fun boss while also putting forth a don’t-mess-with-me persona, though, because her employees don’t give her much trouble. They listen to her within the walls of Helix and sometimes they invite her out for drinks or food. Still, Alena is the person she finds herself having the most in common with.

 

“We should climb a mountain this weekend,” Alena says, out of the blue one afternoon as they’re packing up to head out. Felicity is looking forward to getting back to her apartment, opening a bottle of wine, and calling Oliver before he goes to bed. Basically, her nerves are fried from a rough day and she doesn’t really have a response to the statement other than to laugh.

 

“I’m serious,” Alena says pointedly, shooting a glare Felicity’s way. When she still doesn’t offer anything more than a skeptical eyebrow raise, she continues undeterred, “Come on, Mount Takao is supposed to be good for beginners. We’ve been here for months and we’ve barely left the city.”

 

“And your first idea for leaving the city is climbing a mountain?” Felicity asks incredulously, checking the app tracking the car service they’d called. “Alena, neither of us are really ‘climb a mountain’ people.”

 

“Sure, sure,” Alena nods, a mischievous look in her eye. “But we _could_ be.”

 

“I am not climbing a mountain,” Felicity says with finality.

 

So, naturally, she ends up climbing a mountain. In fairness, Oliver’s interest in physical fitness - a trait she really gets to reap the benefits of - has led her to be a bit of a cardio fiend. So, she’s not totally unprepared for the climb and Alena seems to have some level of experience or ability. Maybe she’s a hiker, though Felicity would not have pegged her for it.

 

It takes them almost two hours to reach the summit and Felicity feels a little bit like she’s dying once they do. She flops down onto the path and gives herself a moment to breathe and be dramatic. Her arms go out to her sides and she glares up at Alena where she’s bent over, hands on her knees.

 

“I told you,” she pants. “Not a ‘climb a mountain’ person.”

 

“But you did,” Alena says, managing a smug sing-song tone even as she works to catch her breath from the last minute sprint to the peak. Felicity can’t help the warm feeling of accomplishment that spreads through her. She grins, rolling over and pushing herself back up onto her feet. She grabs for her bag, pulling her phone from one of the pockets.

 

Alena points out where they can see Mount Fuji where the peak blends almost seamlessly into the skyline while Felicity waits for Oliver to answer the call. She sets her phone to face the view rather than her sweaty face and mussed up ponytail.

 

“Hey,” he greets as he answers the phone, frowning in confusion when he sees what’s been pulled up on the screen. Felicity recognizes his loungewear and checks the time at the top of her screen quickly, realizing it’s nine at night in Starling. “What am I looking at, exactly?”

 

“Mount Fuji!” She enthuses as Alena chugs water from a reusable bottle next to her. “Which you can see because we are currently standing at the peak of Mount Takao!”

 

“Wow,” Oliver laughs, her enthusiasm infecting him. Felicity finally flips the camera around so it’s her face on his screen now instead of the pixelated image of the landscape across from her. He grins at her appearance and Felicity runs a hand over the strands she can feel escaping her ponytail, pushing them back into place.

 

“I climbed a mountain,” she exclaims happily, bouncing on her toes a little bit. In the small camera at the top of the screen, she can see her own red face as Alena leans into view, wiggling her fingers in greeting at Oliver. “I mean, it's a little one and we're definitely taking the cable car back to the bottom but, still! A whole ass mountain, Oliver!"

 

“I love you so much,” he laughs in response, his eyes sparkling even as her questionable phone service makes the picture blur. “If you keep this up, you’re not going to have an excuse not to come to the gym with me anymore.”

 

She sticks her tongue out at him and he laughs again, the sound low and beautiful and Felicity wishes she could bottle it, save it for when she’ll need it later. God, she loves him. The endorphins from the climb have her feeling like she could climb another mountain or do just about anything. She wishes he’d been there to experience it with her.

 

“We should do this again when you come to visit,” she says, switching the phone to her other hand as her arm grows tired from holding it up.

 

“Yeah,” he says quietly, looking down instead of at the camera and her stomach drops. “Yeah, if I can.”

 

They haven’t talked about the possibility of him visiting in a while, but he’d said he’d been expecting things to calm down. It’s always difficult for him to leave the city, especially while he’s still dealing with changes of staff within city leadership. Felicity bites down on her lip, wishing she hadn’t said anything.

 

“Or we’ll just find some trail to hike when I come home,” she says instead, shaking her head and deciding not to pursue the subject. She’ll call him tomorrow morning and they can talk about it. “I just wanted to show you the view.”

 

“It’s gorgeous,” he says, his eyes on his phone screen once more. Felicity knows she looks like an absolute mess - sunburnt, sweaty, and covered in dust - but, still, she doesn’t really think Oliver is talking about Mount Fuji.

 

\---

 

“Hey, is everything-” Oliver stops abruptly and Felicity imagines it has something to do with the image on his computer screen loading for him. She bites down on her lip, a little self conscious at her spontaneous decision.

 

In her defense, she’s a little bit wine drunk and a lot lonely. It’s been months since they’d done anything more than some barely R-rated texting.

 

“What, uh,” he starts, clearing his throat. She sees his eyes move from the screen, over towards the doors across from his desk. “What are you doing?”

 

Felicity shrugs, laughing a little at the question. She’s barely covered in the red, lace lingerie set she’d put on after finishing off a bottle of wine by herself and making this decision. It’s really only the soft gray hoodie, slipping from one of her shoulders, that keeps her from complete indecency.

 

“What does it look like?” She answers, tugging on the strings that tighten the hood where it falls down her back. Oliver narrows his eyes at her.

 

“Is that my sweatshirt?” He asks and she offers him a guilty look, hoping it’s at least somewhat sexy rather than just boozy. “Felicity Smoak, you are a thief.”

 

“You want me to take it off?” She offers, already letting the fabric slip further down her arms towards her elbows. The move completely bares her shoulders to the camera of her laptop, set up about a foot in front of her on the bed, and offering him a better view of the small, lace covered cups that offer lift while barely covering her.

 

Oliver’s eyes move to the doors again.

 

“Hold that thought,” he growls in a familiar tone that makes Felicity shift on the bed, a spike of heat running through her stomach and heading south. He pushes away from his desk, disappearing for a moment.

 

Felicity smirks to herself, proud that her plan had gone so well. She knows Oliver well enough that it wouldn’t take much more than a nice pair of underwear, a stolen item of his clothing and, well, herself. Which makes her sound like a narcissist but, really, if the sight of her half naked and flirty can’t get her boyfriend worked up, then she probably shouldn’t be dating him.

 

“Felicity, I’m at work,” he says, standing at his desk with his hands gripping the edges, rather than returning to his chair. His voice is low and gruff, and she knows he’s working to keep it down to avoid gaining interest from anyone outside the doors. She’s sure they’ve been locked now.

 

“I know,” she grins, a little devilishly. She’d checked the time before she’d hit the call button on Skype and it’s a little after eight in the morning in Starling, so she knows he’s just gotten to work. “It’s kind of hot, right?”

 

Before he can respond, she shirks the sweatshirt entirely and shifts on the bed in an attempt to show off more of her body. There’s no subtle way to show him her ass, which looks amazing from the amount of running around in heels she’s been doing and the sheer boy shorts covering it, and she momentarily wishes she had set this whole thing up on her feet.

 

Either way, the wifi in her apartment is amazing and she can see the way his eyes darken, moving across the screen to survey her. God bless 1080p and a large laptop screen. Her stomach squirms, heat pooling low in her belly with need.

 

“Don’t you miss me?” She asks, pouting a little and playing with the edge of her bra, her fingers moving slowly over the exposed skin. His eyes follow the movement and she remembers the large monitor setup in his office at city hall. She’d installed it, after all.

 

“More than you know,” he says quietly, his eyes making their way back up to where she imagines her face is on his screen. He settles back down into his chair, pulling one of the drawers in his desk open and digging through it. Felicity watches him with a frown, her hand dipping down to touch herself softly over the fabric of her underwear.

 

He finds whatever he’s looking for and leans towards the monitor, coming away with a pair of earbuds in his ears, the wires falling down his chest. Felicity pulls her hand back up, tugging at one of the cups on her bra to give him a quick peek before righting it. Oliver groans, the sound picked up by the microphone attached to his headphones and Felicity laughs.

 

“Felicity Smoak,” he huffs, voice rough with arousal and she’s missed it even more than she’d realized, “You’re gonna be the death of me.”

 

\---

 

Typically, Oliver and Felicity don’t plan out their calls with specific times, mostly because they’ve developed a kind of rhythm. He calls her before he’s heading to bed and after she’s gotten off work most days. Sometimes she wakes him with an early morning facetime, for him, when she can’t sleep.

 

But sometimes they do make a plan ahead of time, where they can both be sure to block off an extended period of time just for the other. Felicity thinks it’s really just so that they don’t have a repeat of her impromptu cybersex call to his office computer. Though, she does kind of like the idea that Oliver may never be able to look at his computer chair without thinking of her.

 

This weekend, for example, they’d made a plan to have a Skype date in the middle of the afternoon for her, the evening for him. Sometimes the calls involve nudity and some very mutual gratification, but a lot of it is just talking and catching up. Even when they talk almost every day, it tends to be a quick “good morning, goodnight” type check in. It’s nice to sit down and tell him all about the city and her work and listen as he fills her in on their friends and what he’s been doing.

 

Instead of sleeping in until just before her call with him, though, she ends up waking up early on Saturday to the loud and unforgiving trilling of her phone. This is what she gets for never putting it on silent and keeping it charging next to her bed. She searches for it on the nightstand, refusing to open her eyes to the morning light until absolutely necessary.

 

“Hello?” She asks, trying and failing to mask the sleep in her voice.

 

“Hey, it’s Alena,” the woman’s familiar voice comes through and Felicity resists the urge to hang up on her for waking her up so early on a weekend. “There’s an issue with the software for the Ramon job.”

 

Felicity groans loudly for a short moment before sighing into the receiver, “I’ll be right there.”

 

Alena greets her with coffee once she reaches Helix and Felicity can tell that she, too, had been dragged out of bed to deal with this whole issue. Neither of them have bothered with proper work attire, Alena in a pair of leggings with her leather jacket protecting her from the cold and Felicity in jeans, Oliver’s stolen hoodie, and her pink trench coat.

 

“Two combined teams of veritable geniuses and we still have to come in on a Saturday,” Alena grumbles over her own coffee as they step into the elevator and press the button for the R&D floor where their respective teams of programmers, who probably also don’t want to be spending their weekend here, are most likely waiting for them.

 

Some high level tech development companies like to contract out software development in order to make the process go faster. Helix is known for contracting, their software littering the technology world as well-known engineering companies like Kord Industries and Palmer Technologies contract out to them. With the Ramon Industries contract, Cayden had combined Alena’s and Felicity’s development teams to work together on it, because of its short deadline and high priority.

 

It takes them longer than Felicity had been hoping to work out the issue. When it becomes clear she won’t be making it home by noon, she texts Oliver asking if they can push it back a few hours. It would mean he’d have to stay up later, waiting for her, but it’s the weekend and it’s only seven in the evening in Starling. Predictably, he responds with an easy promise to wait up and asks her to text him when she has idea of when she’ll get out.

 

Alena orders lunch to the offices, assuring everyone that it’s on company dime since the amount of people working qualifies at think tank levels. Felicity appreciates the thought, knowing no one wants to be working on a Saturday _and_ spending their hard earned money while they’re at it.

 

The issue with the software exists in a disconnect between the code they’ve developed and the type of hardware being used in product development. She makes a note of it, the team creating a separate version that works with the hardware being used. On Monday, she’ll call the team at Ramon Industries and tell them about the issue. The original code is better, but she can’t force them to use hardware she prefers. That said, she can at least float the idea. By the time they finish, it’s well into the early evening.

 

“Go team!” Alena hoots, holding her hand up in the air. Felicity meets her palm in a high five. “Okay, we all deserve a drink for our troubles. On me!”

 

The final words garner whooping and cheering from the team of joined nerds. Felicity shakes her head, laughing at the spectacle they all make, crowded around a bunch of tables covered in computers and take-out containers in an empty office, hollering over free booze.

 

“You in, Smoak?” Alena asks, pointing at her from a few feet away. Felicity bites down on her lip, flipping her phone over on the desk to check the time. It’s really too late to call Oliver now anyway and she’s sure he’d understand and probably encourage her to go out.

 

“I’m in,” she says finally, earning another few hoots from the gathered crowd before they all begin to clean up their messes and file out of the conference room. She unlocks her phone, sending a quick text to Oliver, who she figures has probably headed to bed by now anyway, before following everyone else out of towards the elevator bay.

 

 **_Felicity: Just getting out now. You should head to sleep and we’ll reschedule. Love you!_ ** ****

\---

 

Felicity’s only been at work for about an hour and a half when the texts start rolling in. Oliver doesn’t usually text her during office hours and her liaison at Ramon Industries is being increasingly difficult over this coding issue, so she ignores it for a little bit. Until the repeated chiming of her phone becomes nearly unbearable.

 

**_Rene Ramirez: Please handle your boy_ **

**_Rene Ramirez: Pretty sure it’s heavily frowned up for civil servants to commit murder_ **

**_Rene Ramirez: He just snapped at a councilman WTF_ **

**_Rene Ramirez: Uh how much longer are you gone for again?_ **

 

Felicity frowned at the messages in confusion. Oliver doesn’t always have the best temperament and his short fuse has been known to get him into trouble, but he doesn’t usually bring that side out at City Hall. In fact, she really hasn’t seen him lose his temper in years. It’s weird to see he may be backsliding in all that personal growth. Rene is the assistant to the Deputy Mayor, but he’s young and has a bit of a short fuse himself, so if he’s calling Oliver out for it, it must be bad.

 

In between all the texts from Rene, there’s one from her and Oliver’s closest friend.

 

**_John Diggle: As much as I don’t want to get in the middle of whatever might be going on, did you and Oliver have a fight?_ **

 

Felicity sighs. So, yes, it is that bad apparently. John doesn’t much like to put himself in their relationship, so the fact that he’s also reaching out doesn’t inspire confidence. She unlocks her phone and decides to respond to the pair with a group chat.

 

**_Felicity: What’s going on?_ **

 

Rene, predictably, responds immediately and not with anything terribly helpful.

 

**_Rene Ramirez: Hoss has lost his mind_ **

 

She rolls her eyes, waiting for a more helpful response from John.

 

**_John Diggle: He’s been in a state all morning. He’s been grumpy since you left, but this is a new level. Everything alright between you two?_ **

 

Question of the hour. Felicity thought everything was alright. Not perfect, obviously, seeing as she’s still almost five thousand miles away in a timezone that usually puts her a whole day ahead of him, but otherwise? Things weren’t ideal, but they were making it work.

 

They’d texted in the two days following her unintentionally standing him up on Saturday and Felicity figured it was just about schedules that they hadn’t had time to talk on the phone. Everything seemed fine over text, but Oliver had always been good at concealing when things bothered him. Only conversing via short messages just made it a lot easier for him to do so.

 

And Felicity had been so caught up with other things, she hadn’t even questioned it. Dammit.

 

Instead of responding to the texts from their friends, she decides to go right to dealing with the problem himself. She swipes into her contacts, pulling Oliver’s name up from her list of favorites and hitting the green call button. She waits, listening to the ringing on the other end, and worries for a moment that he’s going to ignore her and send the call to voicemail.

 

“Hello?” He answers tightly on what she thinks may have been the last ring. None of which is a good sign.

 

“Stop being grumpy,” she says, deciding to be direct and maybe, possibly, get a smile out of him.

 

“Excuse me?” He asks and she sighs. So, no smile then. She glances up at her office door, sliding out of her chair to go and push the frosted glass door closed.

 

“Both Rene and Dig tell me you’re being extremely snappish today,” she explains, settling back into her chair now that she’s content with the amount of privacy she’s created. She offers in a teasing tone, “Well, more than usual.”

 

“They shouldn’t be bothering you just because they think I’m in a mood,” he offers gruffly and Felicity frowns, sinking down in her chair a little bit. She can see where they’re coming from if this is the treatment she’s getting. She doesn’t even want to imagine what he may have said to the councilman.

 

“It’s not bothering me if they’re worried about you,” she tells him before steeling herself for the rest of their concerns. “And if it’s because they think it has something to do with me.”

 

Oliver’s silence is telling enough and Felicity feels a heavy weight settle in her stomach. She’d been hoping that it was something, anything, else. A bad night’s sleep, a rough encounter with a voter. Hell, even an incorrectly made coffee order. She doesn’t want to be the reason he’s in a bad mood.

 

“I’m sorry about this weekend,” she sighs, closing her eyes as she leans back in her chair. “Getting called into work was unexpected and then Alena insisted on drinks for solving the problem and time just got away from me.”

 

“You went out for drinks?” He asks and she can imagine the confused frown forming on his face. Shit. She hadn’t meant to mention that part. Not that she was keeping it from him, but why add insult to injury? While he’d spent his Friday night waiting for her call, she’d spent her Saturday drinking sake in the city.

 

“Yeah,” she admits. “After we’d figured out this issue in the software coding, Alena and I treated the team to drinks. Just to thank them all for working on a Saturday to get the problem fixed.”

 

“Is that why you told me not to wait?” He asks. “It was only midnight here, it’s not like I wouldn’t have been happy to stay up. It wasn’t because it was late, it was because you wanted to go out with your friends.”

 

“I thought you were happy I was making friends here,” she reminds him.

 

“I am!” He insists, almost before she can even finish. Felicity pauses, frowning to herself.

 

“Are you?” She asks, quieter this time. “Because, right now, you’re coming off a little ‘if not me, then no one’ prison warden-esque and I love you, but you can’t expect me to-”

 

“I don’t,” he says, quiet but insistent as he understands where her mind has gone. They’ve never been those people who can’t have interests or friends outside of each other. She doesn’t really like the idea that the distance is turning him into one of those guys. He repeats himself, “I don’t. It’s not that, I promise. I just…”

 

He trails off, but she knows. She squeezes her eyes shut, hating herself a little bit for putting them through this just for what? Resume fodder? Experience? She wonders if he’d known, months ago when she’d been offered the job, where they would be right now, would he have still told her to go?

 

“I know,” she says finally, almost a whisper in her empty office. “Me too.”

 

\---

 

They find a way back to their normal schedule of conversations, though they’ve become markedly more light in nature. Like they’re compensating for how much they miss each other by refusing to ever bring it up. It’s still there, in the subtext and the sad silences, but she doesn’t know how to make it better. It feels like things have shifted somehow.

 

“Why did you end things with the guy you were seeing when you took the job?” She asks Alena out of the blue one day. She’s waiting for the water in the coffeemaker to heat up and Alena is chewing on a breakfast bar. She frowns at the question.

 

“Oh, uh, we just kind of realized we didn’t think our relationship could last this distance,” she shrugs, tearing at the wrapper to reveal more of the packed granola. “It sucked because I really did like him, but we hadn’t been together that long.”

 

Felicity nods, playing idly with her phone in her hands as she considers the explanation. She and Oliver have been together for years and he’d been so sure they could survive the distance. It’s not that she had doubted they could, but she wasn’t sure if she had wanted them to have to survive it.

 

“Are you worried about you and Oliver?” Alena asks after a long moment of silence. Behind Felicity, the coffee maker gurgles to life, beginning to fill her mug with the dark liquid. She shoots Alena a small smile, shaking her head.

 

“No,” she lies.

 

But she really wishes she hadn’t asked the question. Coupling it with how her and Oliver’s conversations have been lately and the way she’d hurt him a few weeks ago by skipping their date, the guilt is beginning to eat away at her. It’s ridiculous, she knows, because there’s no way Oliver would have let her miss out on this opportunity but, dammit, she hadn’t wanted to risk their relationship for a year-long job.

 

She doesn’t bring it up to him, because it would break their new, unspoken rule that they avoid any conversation that risks becoming too heavy. Which is really where it all starts to go so very, very wrong. Conversations become even more stilted for fear of saying the wrong thing and Felicity doesn’t know how to fix it without breaking it more first. Instead, she shoves it all down and tries to compartmentalize.

 

It’s all just the lead up to a breakdown that’s been months in the making.

 

It’s not that she hasn’t cried since she got to Japan, she has. On her second night in her new apartment, when she didn’t have Oliver sharing her bed or the alcohol running through her system helping her sleep. Three weeks in after a long skype call with her mom that had made her feel incredibly homesick.

 

But she hasn’t had a real, honest to God, capital-F-capital-O Freak Out since she arrived. So, packing all of those fears and anxieties and the loneliness and sadness down inside herself with no outlet? She might as well have been cramming gunpowder into an extremely volatile old musket.

 

She wakes up at three in the morning, startled into consciousness by a dream she can’t remember and the sudden and invasive fear that she’s going to lose Oliver Queen.

 

She fumbles for her phone on the bedside table, sitting up straight on the bed and clicking on the lamp. Oliver must know what time it is in Tokyo, having become used to the time difference, because he answers on the second ring with concern in his voice.

 

“Hey,” he greets softly and she frowns to herself because he’s probably at work and interrupted something important. “Is everything okay?”

 

His voice is so soft and concerned, pressed right into her ear from her tight grip on the cellphone in her hand. It breaks through her tense state and she just starts crying. She presses her hand to her mouth, fingers curled into a fist against her lips in an attempt to suppress the sobs.

 

“Felicity,” Oliver calls quietly, trying to calm her. “Honey, please, tell me what’s wrong.”

 

“Everything,” she manages to gasp out after a long moment of sobs. The heaving of her chest dies down enough to allow her to speak, but hot tears still spill over her cheek. “Everything feels like it’s breaking and I don’t know how to fix it.”

 

“What are you talking about?” He asks gently and she can hear the frown in his voice. “Is this about work? Did something happen?”

 

“No, Helix is great,” she offers, though it probably doesn’t help much in the way of explanation. “Everything here is great.”

 

“Okay,” he says slowly, clearly trying to understand. “Then, what’s breaking?”

 

“Us,” she says finally, with more force than she intends as a hiccup breaks the short word in half. There’s a stunned, she thinks it’s stunned at least, silence on the other end of the line so she presses on. “You said we could do this, that I could be here and we would still work, but what if we don’t? We’ve been tiptoeing around each other for weeks and I don’t want to lose you, I can’t lose you, but…”

 

She cuts herself off, the words dissolving into quiet sobs again. Oliver is still quiet on the other end for a moment.

 

“But?” He finally prompts, a tremor to his voice that lets her know he’s dreading the end of that sentence as much as she is.

 

“But I don’t want to keep hurting you,” she admits, all the guilt she’s been feeling falling over her until she’s leaning forward, nearly draped over her knees with the weight of it. “I can’t not be here, but I hate that it’s hurting you- hurting us. I love you too much to keep doing this.”

 

“Do I get a say in this at all?” He asks and Felicity lets out a huff of breath. It could be a laugh or a noise of ascent, but even she isn’t sure what the intention is. Oliver presses on anyway, “I love you and I love how strong you are. You are the strongest person I’ve ever met. And if being with you means surviving a few more months of distance, then I’m up for the task.”

 

“Are you sure?” She asks quietly, wiping at the tear tracks drying on her cheeks. Oliver lets out a quiet laugh of disbelief and she knows. She knows that he loves her and that a few months with a few thousand miles between them wouldn’t change that, but she wants him to be absolutely certain. She wants him to be positive that their relationship, that _she_ is worth all of this trouble.

 

“I’m sure,” he says easily.

 

\---

 

Once they wrap up the Ramon Industries contract, things at Helix actually begin to calm down. Felicity puts in for a week of vacation and decides not to tell Oliver. She isn’t sure it’ll get approved - she has to prove she has someone who can handle her responsibilities while she’s gone - and when it does, she just really likes the idea of surprising him.

 

So, she ends up standing outside of her own house, waiting for Oliver to open the door. It’s a little ridiculous, because she has her key on the same keychain with her Tokyo apartment key and the little nerd emoji charm Oliver had gotten her when they’d first moved in together.

 

She lifts her fist, knocking a little harder on the wooden door. When she had left, the doorbell had been fried and she hadn’t had a chance to fix it. Oliver had been insistent they could just buy a new one, but it was cheaper to replace the wiring and she could do that for free. She stares at the little lit up button next to the doorframe, wondering if Oliver had gotten it fixed in her absence.

 

The whole “knock, knock, oh surprise, it’s your long distance girlfriend” concept may have been nice in theory, but it’s freezing outside and she’s growing antsy waiting for Oliver to answer the door. In reality, she’s only been waiting about a minute, but it feels like forever before he finally opens the door.

 

Judging by the surprise on his face, he did not check to see who was standing on his front porch before opening the door. Which is surprisingly stupid because he is the mayor. It could be a disgruntled voter or a stalker or someone trying to sell him something!

 

Lucky for him, it’s his tiny blonde girlfriend, dropping the handle of her suitcase and practically throwing herself at him.

 

“What are you doing here?” Oliver laughs, his arms tightening around her back and lifting her slightly off the ground. He spins her in a giddy half circle and Felicity peppers kisses over his cheek before he sets her back on the ground.

 

“I requested the week off work for a visit,” she explains as his hands come up to the sides of her face. He’s leaning in as she’s still trying to get the words out. “I thought I’d make it a surprise.”

 

His mouth covers hers in an excited kiss. It’s mostly teeth and barely qualifies as a kiss because they can’t stop smiling long enough to do more than bump noses and press their lips together. Still, she pulls back breathless, fingers wrapped around the back of his neck.

 

“Consider me surprised,” he says, sounding a little breathless himself. Felicity laughs, bouncing on her toes and relishing in the feel of the hair at the back of his head sliding against the skin of her fingers. She smiles a little mischievously at him and raises her eyebrows, leaning to the side to glance into the entryway behind him.

 

“So, you gonna invite me inside or what?” She asks, trying to memorize the way his smile somehow widens even further at the question. He steps out of the way, waving her inside of the house while he reaches around her to grab her suitcase.

 

She moves into the house, letting the familiarity of it settle over her. Somewhere in her stomach a knot gives way.

 

“What are you making?” She asks, shirking her trench coat and hanging it on the hook by the door, in between his brown leather jacket and black peacoat. Oliver’s arms slide around her stomach, wrapping around her to press his lips to the skin beneath her ear. Felicity hums in contentment, sliding her hands up his forearms, bared by pushed up sleeves of his soft, cotton henley.

 

“It was chicken parmesan for one,” he says, once she’s been properly distracted from the smells coming from the kitchen, “but I suppose I could be persuaded into sharing.”

 

“That’s okay,” she says, shaking her head and pulling away from him to continue down the hall to the kitchen. “I actually ate dinner on the plane.”

 

The scent of the breaded chicken is stronger now, the oven light illuminating it as it cooks within. Oliver follows after her, checking the timer on the oven and watching her from across the granite-topped island. Felicity reaches for the handle to the fridge, tugging the door open and checking within. She’d forgotten how nice the sight of a fully-stocked fridge could be. She might be eating out too much in Tokyo.

 

“All I need right now is some vitamin D,” she tells him, moving a half empty bottle of wine to the side to grab the orange juice. She stalls halfway through the movement, glancing back at Oliver to find him smirking at her. “That was not a euphemism. I meant literal vitamin D.”

 

She pulls the carton out and shakes it for clarity. Oliver chuckles, leaning forward and placing his elbows on the countertop between them. Felicity sets the carton down on the counter and meets him, leaning forward on her own forearms.

 

“I really missed you,” he says, but it’s not sad this time. It’s colored in a soft smile and a shine in his eyes. Butterflies take flight in her stomach and she reaches forward to drag her fingers across his open palm.

 

“I really missed you,” she echoes and Oliver squeezes her fingers.

 

\---

 

She spends most of her first day back in Starling sleeping off her jetlag. It doesn’t help that she’s on a completely different sleep schedule, but at least flying back to the United States had gained her a day. She’s deciding to worry about losing a day when she flies back when the time comes.

 

Oliver has to go to work anyway, so it’s not like she’s really missing out on any time with him by sleeping for most of the day. Still, she sets an alarm on her phone for a few hours before he usually gets home so she doesn’t genuinely sleep all through the afternoon.

 

She does lounge in bed for a while though, reveling in the chance to lay in her own bed with the plush duvet Oliver’s time as a rich kid made him convince her to buy. It was a good decision, soft and puffy with a thread count she didn’t even know they made. He must be sleeping on both sides of the bed, too, because the pillows on her side smell like his shampoo and cologne. It makes it easy to keep from forcing herself out of the bed.

 

When Oliver gets home, she’s soaking in a lavender scented bubble bath.

 

“Felicity?” He calls, by her approximation from the hallway in front of the stairs. She wonders if he’s worried she won’t actually be here.

 

“Bathroom,” she calls loud enough to make it down the stairs, hoping he realizes she means the master bath off the bedroom and not the bathroom down the hall from the kitchen. He must, because she hears the creak of the wood as he climbs the stairs, moments before he appears in the doorway.

 

He leans against the doorframe, stocking clad but otherwise still dressed for work, clasping his hands behind his back and watching her as she sinks a little further into the bubbles, humming in sleepy contentment.

 

“My apartment in Tokyo only has a shower,” she explains. “And the only thing I missed almost as much as you was getting to settle into a hot bath at the end of a long week.”

 

Oliver hums in understanding, pushing off of the door frame and crossing the large bathroom towards the tub. He settles carefully onto the edge of it, reaching forward to brush a loose curl, escaped from the precarious bun at the top of her head, behind her ear. Felicity leans into the touch, his large hand cupping her jaw.

 

“Have you eaten today?” He asks. Felicity puckers her lips guiltily and he gives her a look. “I’ll whip something up.”

 

He disappears back into the bedroom again and she sighs, letting her head fall back against the porcelain lip of the tub and soaking in the water for five more minutes before giving in. She climbs out, wiping the bubbles off of her skin and wrapping herself in a fluffy burgundy towel.

 

She steps back into the bedroom and can hear the sound of Oliver moving about in the kitchen below. Unzipping her suitcase, she catches the sight of something tucked hastily into the purple bag and gets an idea. She pulls the lingerie set from within the suitcase, tossing it on the bed, and crosses over to the closet. She slides the door open, displaying Oliver’s side of it where a line of crisp, pressed dress shirts hangs.

 

Once she’s freed her hair into waves over her shoulders and pulled one of his stolen shirts on over the familiar underwear set, she heads down the stairs. Her barefoot state lets her sneak across the hardwood and into the kitchen as Oliver faces the counter away from her.

 

“You know, honestly, I’m really not that hungry,” she announces, crossing one of her feet over the other and waiting for him to turn. Predictably, he does, saying her name in a tone that usually means the beginning of a lecture. He halts at the sight of her.

 

It’s more than a little gratifying, knowing she can still make the Great and Gorgeous Oliver Queen’s jaw drop with just a few garments. His jaw works and she knows he’s searching for a comeback, brain stalled by the sight of her. In his defense, it’s been so long since they’ve seen each other in person and Felicity is dying to get him out of his suit.

 

“I suppose lunch can wait,” he admits, voice low and rough as she stalks across the kitchen towards him. There’s the makings of a sandwich on the counter behind him and Felicity is pretty sure, if she hadn’t interrupted, it would have turned into a monte cristo.

 

“Yeah?” She says, reaching him and wrapping her arms around his midsection, pressing her palms against his spine and pulling herself flush against him. She pushes up onto her toes, pressing a kiss to the underside of his jaw.

 

“Definitely,” he practically growls, his hands coming around her to land firmly on her ass over the dress shirt. He lifts her, earning a surprised squeak from her, and sets her on the cold granite of the island. She hisses at the contact against her warm skin, but Oliver covers her mouth with his own, swallowing the sound. He pushes her legs apart gently with his hands on her knees, stepping in between her thighs.

 

Felicity pulls away, tilting her head backwards, and Oliver takes the cue. He kisses a line down her throat, stopping at the juncture of her shoulder to nip at the skin. Her hands move listlessly over his shoulders, catching in the lapel of his suit jacket and pushing it off of his shoulders. He pulls his hands from where they’d landed on her sides, beneath the pilfered dress shirt, to help remove the jacket.

 

She tugs at the buttons on his shirt, growing distracted by the hard lines of his stomach as she drags her palms over the planes of his abdomen. Oliver notices her distraction and his fingers trip over hers, unbuttoning his own shirt. Felicity moves her focus to the buckle of his belt, sliding it through the loops and undoing the buckle before moving to the fly.

 

“Hey, hey,” Oliver says all of a sudden, his hand on her jaw angling her face back up towards him with a frown. He points out unnecessarily, “It’s been a while. Should we take it slow?”

 

Felicity moves her own hands up to his face, pulling him smoothly down towards her for another kiss. It’s slower, languid and comfortable. Honestly, she’d planned to have him naked the moment she got a chance last night but had, embarrassingly, passed out from the jetlag.

 

“We have all week,” she reminds him, pulling away from the kiss. He seems to get the hint, pressing further up against her where she sits on the countertop. He kisses her again, open mouthed and messy, and she tugs on his hair as she eases his dress pants down his hips with her heels.

 

“Not a moment to waste, then,” he comments in between kisses and Felicity nods eagerly, letting her stolen shirt slip down her arms. She sits up straight and Oliver eases the shirt the rest of the way off of her body, pressing a kiss to the soft skin just above the cup of her bra.

 

“In fairness,” she pants as he eases down the red lace and his teeth scrape lightly over her nipple, “we never did christen the new island.”

 

Oliver’s responding laugh vibrates through her chest.

 

\---

 

Oliver manages to leave work early most of the days she’s in town, but he can’t take off entirely. Felicity doesn’t mind, though, because they spend their evenings together and it gives her a chance to catch up with her friends in the city. She has lunch with Thea, Oliver’s sister, and Dinah, who used to be on Oliver’s security team before getting a promotion to lieutenant.

 

Oliver sets up a dinner with John and his wife, Lyla, which goes wonderfully. She’s always enjoyed spending time with the couple and getting to catch up with them is nice. She’s realizing she’s maybe been shirking communication with all of the people in her life besides Oliver. It reminds her of the guilt that she’d been wearing heavily while in Japan and it comes back in full force.

 

The night before her flight back to Tokyo, Thea sets up a small dinner with their small group of close friends as a goodbye. They’d thrown her a full party back when she’d left for Japan initially, but knowing that they all miss her enough to want to do it again makes her chest go warm. She squeezes Thea so tightly in a hug, she thinks the younger woman may have trouble breathing for a few minutes afterwards.

 

“Are you ready to go back?” Oliver asks after dinner, once she’s changed out of her dress and cuddled up against him in bed. He asks it lightly, like he’s teasing her. As if she could ever be tired of Starling or the people she loves here.

 

“No,” she says quietly, stroking her fingers over his bare chest and trying not to let the sting against the back of her eyes turn into real tears. “I’m really not.”

 

“Hey,” Oliver says, concern evident in his voice. He shifts upwards onto his elbow, making her sit up as well so he can see her face. She brushes self consciously at the space beneath her eyes, willing away the moisture building at her lash line. “I know it’s hard, but it’s only a few more months and then you get to come home for good, unless you decide to extend your contract.”

 

Felicity lets out a humorless laugh at the concept. She loves what she’s doing at Helix and the people she’s getting to do it with, but another year of this - of missing her friends, hurting herself and Oliver, not knowing when the next time she’ll be back is - sounds impossible.

 

“Are you still worried about us?” He asks quietly, sitting up fully. Felicity tugs the duvet up over her chest, curling into it for warmth and safety.

 

“No,” she sighs, “but I know that my leaving again is going to hurt us both all over again. Which was the whole problem.”

 

Oliver reaches for her, his hand cradling her jaw softly. His thumb swipes over her cheek, brushing away a tear she hadn’t realized had fallen. She holds her breath, unsure what the right thing to do here is. Maybe it’s unfair of her to keep doing this, to keep expecting him to wait for her. It’s hard on her, too, but she’s the one who decided to move to another corner of the world. He shouldn’t have to carry that.

 

He pulls his hand back suddenly and Felicity’s stomach sinks, worried she’s misread this whole thing. Maybe he’s the one who’s going to be strong enough to call it quits. This week has been so good, but maybe it was always meant to be a farewell tour. He leans across the bed away from her, reaching for something in the bedside drawer. He sits back up, clicking the lamp on his side on.

 

“I was gonna wait until you got home for good,” he says and Felicity frowns, “but I want you to know that I have never, not once, doubted that we would make it through twelve months on different continents.”

 

“Oliver,” she says quietly, not understanding where he’s going with this. He reveals his hand from behind his back suddenly and Felicity sucks in a breath at the sight of the small velvet box cupped in his palm. She grips the duvet in tight fists, looking from the box to his face and back again.

 

“Felicity Megan Smoak,” he starts, dragging her full name out with slow, quiet reverence as he flips the lid on the box open. A startlingly sparkly diamond sits in a silver setting, catching the light from the lamp behind him and shining it up at her. “Will you marry me?”

 

“Are you sure?” She asks, because she’s still the same person she’s always been - which means nervous and self conscious and unsure how on earth she got lucky enough to have someone as amazing as him fall in love with her.

 

“I have never been more sure of anything,” he insists. His tongue darts out, wetting his lower lip nervously as he watches her. “But, more importantly, I want you to be sure, however you answer.”

 

“Yes,” she says almost instantly, the word falling from her lips before she can even think it. She doesn’t need to. “Oh, my God, yes. Of course!”

 

She throws herself at him, nearly knocking the ring box from his hand in her haste to kiss his mouth. He laughs against her lips, the corner of the velvet box digging into her hip. She pulls away, tugging him into an embrace, completely forgetting the ceremonial part where he’s actually supposed to give her the ring.

 

“So,” he says when she finally releases him and he’s able to slide the ring onto her finger, “Do you think we can make it through another five months?”

 

Felicity holds her hand out in front of her, turning it a bit to really examine the ring and smiling to herself. She settles back against his chest again and Oliver eases them backwards onto the bed.

 

“I think we could make it through a lifetime,” she admits and Oliver presses a soft kiss to her hair.

 

He dips down, murmuring against her ear, “That’s what I’m counting on.”

**Author's Note:**

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